"Very well!" he said. "I understand! But there is no need for you to trouble. All our arrangements are made—have been made for months. We attend the Gathering to-night; and afterwards, when Hellier Crescent is quiet, we go—as unobtrusively as we came. You see I give you the key to our plans; you are free to frustrate them, if you think fit. I don't believe I had any real hope of merciful judgment when I came here—women are not merciful when they are robbed of their illusions. But I confess I hoped for justice. I thought that you might hate me—"
"Hate you?" she cried. "Hate you? We only hate what we respect. I don't hate you. I only despise you with all my heart. I want you to go before I despise myself as well!" Her own cruel disillusioning—her own unbearable sense of loss—swept over her afresh; her voice rose again, and again broke hysterically. With an uncontrolled movement of grief and mortification she turned away from him and threw herself upon a couch, burying her face in the pillows.
For several minutes she cried tempestuously; then through the storm of her angry tears she caught the sound of a closing door. With a start she sat up and looked about her.
The faint relic of daylight still showed through the curtains of the window; the firelight still played pleasantly on the untouched tea-table and the fragile furniture; but the room was empty. The Prophet was gone.
CHAPTER VIII
hen she realized this fact, Enid rose from her seat with a murmur of dismay. In her sharply feminine sense of loss, she took one involuntary step towards the door; but almost as the step was taken, her anger, her shattered faith assailed her anew, and, with a fresh burst of tears she turned and flung herself back upon the couch.
For a long time she lay with her face among the pillows; then, at last, as her angry sobs died out and the violence of her grief subsided, she sat up, wiped her eyes, and glanced at her dripping handkerchief.